Western Digital bumps EIDE drive buffer to 8MB

Big fat cache

Western Digital (WD) has released its latest Caviar hard drive, the WD-1000BB-SE, a 100GB EIDE hard drive. The thing that separates it from the pack is its 8MB buffer, which the company claims is the largest available in this class of drive.

A hard drive's buffer is used to hold the results of recent reads from the disk, as well as storing information that is likely to be requested in the near future. Much like a cache, the buffer is a data area between the requests being sent to the hard disk, and the data stored on the disk itself.

The industry standard for desktop hard drives has been between 1MB and 4MB for the past few years. An 8MB cache has typically been the domain of higher-end SCSI drives, which also spin at 10,000RPM, rather than this drive's 7,200RPM.

A benchmark performed by StorageReview.com shows a marked performance increase, especially on a WinMark test, over its 2MB buffer twin brother, the WD-1000BB. See the full results here.

The special edition drive is available from WD's online store for $379, or from its distribution channel. ®